Chatsworth House

“ I should be ashamed to confess, indeed, that I was not pleased with the pictures, and more than pleased with the exquisite carvings and magnificent sculpture, viewed merely as works of art; but I was fatigued with the vast worldliness of such a house, and felt that it would better have suited a Hadrian, than it does a Christian nobleman of England. Such a residence as Warwick Castle comes to its possessor historically, and a nobleman may well keep it up; but Chatsworth seems built for display, and must be altogether too much for comfort. ”

“ The Small Dining-Room.
Fig. 140.—CHATSWORTH HOUSE, Derbyshire, 1687–1706.
Talman had adopted the same treatment at Chatsworth, which was being built at this time [62] for the first Duke of Devonshire (Fig. 140) . Chatsworth is on a much larger scale than [207] Dyrham, and is far better known to the public. Indeed to many persons it presents itself as the model of what a great nobleman’s seat should be. This is owing to its simple and dignified treatment, and to its admirable situation and the lordly nature of its lay out. When examined closely, it lacks interest and variety in its detail. ”

“ THE SCULPTURE-GALLERY, CHATSWORTH.
GATEWAY TO STABLE.
The gardens at Chatsworth are as noted as the house, and are to many minds the gem of the estate. They cover about one hundred and twenty-two acres, and are so arranged as to make a beautiful view out of every window of the palace. All things are provided that can add to rural beauty—fountains, cascades, running streams, lakes, rockeries, orange-groves, hothouses, woods, sylvan dells—and no labor or expense is spared to enhance the attractions of trees, flowers, and shrubbery. ”

“ Newhaven, which had been a very important place in the coaching-days, was a big three-storeyed house with twenty-five bedrooms and stabling for a hundred horses. It stood at a junction of roads about 1,100 feet above sea-level in a most lonely place, and in the zenith of its popularity there was seldom a bedroom empty, the house being quite as gay as if it had been in London itself. It had been specially built for the coach traffic by the then Duke of Devonshire, whose mansion, Chatsworth House, was only a few miles distant. ”

“ At the entrance to the gardens, shortly after passing through the lodge, is the house formerly inhabited by the late Sir Joseph Paxton, M.P., [386] who was head gardener to the late Duke of Devonshire. This house, originally a fit dwelling-place for the head gardener of such a grand establishment as Chatsworth, but which had “grown with the greatness” of Sir Joseph until it became in itself an elegant mansion, is now very properly altered and divided into two residences. ”

“ Rufford—gives more alms than all they.” It is curious that Chatsworth, so famous in history, has no part in the rhyme. Save for an old engraving of it in the new, the present Chatsworth, no trace of the fabric of the second mansion, the house planned by William Cavendish the first, exists; and in the grounds no relic is to be found belonging to the date of Queen Mary’s imprisonment except a scrap of ivied ruin known as her “bower.”
What is the fate of the rest of the long list? Wingfield is an exquisite ruined fragment. ”

“ The building of Worksop Manor house had been commenced in the time of the first Earl of Shrewsbury, but was not finished when the new Countess became its mistress. Having built Chatsworth, here was another opportunity for her to display her genius in architecture, and under her direction it was completed, and became a sumptuous residence.
The Earl must have been a nobleman of redoubtable and fearless disposition, or a courtier whose pliant will was easily moulded by accomplished and attractive women, else he would not have been involved in the feminine intrigues that he was. ”

“ William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, has six dwelling-places, of which Chatsworth (two-storied, and of the finest order of Grecian architecture) is one.
The Visconnt of Kinalmeaky, who is Earl of Cork, in Ireland, is owner of Burlington House, Piccadilly, with its extensive gardens, reaching to the fields outside London; he is also owner of Chiswick, where there are nine magnificent corps de logis; he also owns Londesborough, which is a new house by the side of an old palace. ”

“ Not only are they interesting as a guide to the evolution of style, but also in their variety of size and importance. There is the small and ancient Peak Castle; the comparatively modern palace of Chatsworth; the great house of Haddon, with work of every century from the thirteenth to the seventeenth; the extensive ruins of Wingfield; the splendid remains of Bolsover; while among the dales and on the hill sides of the northern parts of the county are many diminutive manor houses, like Offerton and Highlow, or Snitterton and North Lees. ”

“ Family correspondence has proved how strained were the conjugal relations of Earl and Countess, and how a barrier beginning, seemingly, with a foundation no less tangible than an armful of tapestries (but subsequently 214solidified by the sheer masonry of Chatsworth) had grown up between them. All matters of private dispute were complicated by their own difficulties in regard to the tenants of their various estates and any neighbours with whom they were on bad terms. Little by little the fact that the house of Shrewsbury was not at peace with itself must penetrate to the greater world. ”

“ Both Princess Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey spent part of their childhood in it. The palace of the Bishops of Winchester, at Southwark, having become dilapidated, as we have seen, a new one was built at Chelsea in 1663, and was occupied by eight successive bishops. Shrewsbury House was another palace built in the reign of Henry VIII. The wife of the Earl of Shrewsbury was the founder of Chatsworth, Oldcotes and Hardwick. ”

“ However, from that time I felt assured, not only that it could be done satisfactorily, but that the most appropriate manner to form and support level glass roofs, to a great extent, was that adopted this year for the New Victoria House at Chatsworth, which may be considered a miniature type of the Great Industrial Building. ”

“ Of the interior of the Victoria Regia House we give an engraving, showing the gigantic leaf and flower of this royal plant, which was first grown, and first flowered, at Chatsworth, and named after our beloved Queen, to whom the first flower was presented in 1849. Besides the “Victoria Regia House,” other points of interest in the kitchen gardens are the “New Holland House,” the “Amherstia House,” the “Pine Houses” and the “Vineries.” The kitchen gardens are not, of course, open to visitors. ”

“ Whether applied in the present to this most beautiful and intimate purpose or not, all the great mansions of Elizabeth Lady Shrewsbury were most truly intended for sweet daily uses. Two principal houses had she of her 351own—Hardwick and Chatsworth. Eight more George Talbot brought her—Wingfield, Sheffield, Rufford, Welbeck, Worksop, Tutbury, Bolsover. One smaller place he cherished for his old age, a little country house at Handsworth in the same county, and one more, as already explained, she in her old age founded—Owlcotes or Oldcotes—besides beginning the rebuilding of Bolsover Castle. ”

“ Belonging to his Grace the Duke of Devonshire—one of the most enlightened and liberal-minded of our English aristocracy—Chatsworth, with its park and grounds, is thrown open to “the people,” under such restrictions only as are essentially necessary to its well-being and proper conservation. Assuredly no mansion and grounds are more freely and liberally made available to the public, while none are more worthy of being visited. ”

“ Compared with Haddon Hall, the superb modern residence of Chatsworth struck me as tame and spiritless. The mansion has indeed a pleasant seat: and the deer, bounding over the velvet turf of its park, or the peacock, strutting amid its balusters and fountains, give it indeed a lordly look of opulent show, without much ease. Yet what is it, at best, but the dull round of “my lord’s apartments,” without one association beyond that of my lord’s great wealth and luxury? ”

“ They are obviously not drawn to the same scale, inasmuch as the new building was 100 ft. long as against 120 ft. for the old. The fact that Smithson thought it [67] worth while to draw the ground story, so far as then built, suggests that he was struck by its novel treatment. The rusticated stonework, the flat arched openings, and the unmoulded plinth and stringcourse were unfamiliar features.
Fig. 37.—Drawing by Inigo Jones for the Banqueting House, Whitehall. A preliminary sketch, subsequently modified. The annexes were omitted.
From the Chatsworth Collection. ”

“ We made an early start in a wagonette for Chatsworth. It was an ideal day—the Spring in full burst, with that delicate film of blue mist that always makes me think of a veil, to enhance its charms—the whole way a succession of pictures—vales, swelling uplands, far hills, the Derwent in its curious curves. We were speechless and exclamatory by turns.
Chatsworth is a palace, in the midst of its thousands of acres cultivated and adorned in every possible way; its exquisite lawn laid out in innumerable gardens in Italian, Alpine, German, French, and ever so many other styles ”

“ There is nothing in the regular, classic lines of Chatsworth to remind us of that Chetel, the Saxon, who is believed to have given his name to the place in which he dwelt. His homestead and oxgangs of land fell, as Domesday records, to the Crown, and were given in custody to William Peveril, who had also the stronghold at Castleton, as we have seen, with Haddon by the Wye, and many a castle and manor besides. Nothing now remains of these times at Chatsworth, save, perhaps, the grove of venerable oaks, gnarled, shattered, and time-worn, upon the neighboring hill.... ”

“ In 1820 the late Duke—William Spencer Cavendish, sixth Duke of Devonshire—who had succeeded to the title in 1811, commenced some great improvements at Chatsworth by erecting, from the designs of Sir Jeffrey Wyatt, the north wing, containing, with all the domestic offices, a number of other apartments, as well as the dining-room, sculpture-gallery, orangery, banqueting-room, and pavilion ”

“ The structure of the square pavilions was as transparent and rectilinear as the interior framework of Veugny’s slightly later market seems to have been, and the ranges between were covered, just as so many wooden greenhouses had been, with transparent roofs rising in two quadrants. At Chatsworth in Derbyshire the Great Conservatory was built in 1836-40 by the 6th Duke of Devonshire’s gardener, Sir Joseph 121Paxton (1803-65) , possibly with some minor assistance from Decimus Burton. ”

“ An hour's drive or so, brought us to the pretty little village of Edensor, close by the inn of which, is the entrance to Chatsworth. The village is situated within the park, and is the property of the Duke, and certainly it is the most charming one we ever saw. Every cottage is of stone, and no two alike in their architecture. One is a mimic Gothic castle ”

“ The river sweeps in front of the Palace of the [Pg 262] Peak, with ancient trees reflecting soothing shadows in the shining water. So much has been written about Chatsworth—its great hall, its superb state apartments, its miracles of wood-carving, its unique sketch-gallery, its noble libraries, its priceless picture-gallery, its grand drawing-rooms, bed-rooms, and banqueting-rooms, its superb sculpture gallery, its gardens, terraces, conservatories, woods, and fountains—that little fresh can be said upon a subject so well worn. ”

“ At Chatsworth, for the Duke of Devonshire, he added (1821–32) the north wing, including the picture-gallery and tower, the Sheffeld and Derby entrances, the alcove in the gardens, and other works ‘in the Italian style.’ After making (1821) a survey of Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge, he prepared alternative designs for alterations to the central buildings, including the addition of the Taylor library and a hall and staircase for the master's lodge. ”

“ Whilst I have been advocating the merits of our Elizabethan houses, you must not suppose I refer to the multitudes of grotesque little villas which grow up every summer round London; or to those alterations and adaptations, by which one sees Gothic spires, plastered over with stucco, starting up out of one half of an old farm house; the walls notched into battlements, and uncouth animals set a grinning against each other over the gate posts, and the hall crammed and fortified with rusty swords and pikes of all ages and fashions. ”

“ My honest sweet Chatsworth: I like the weekly price of my hired court stuff so evil that upon Thursday next I will send it home again, at which day the week endeth. I pray you cause such stuff as Mowsall left packed in a sheet to be brought hither by the next carrier: there be hand towels and other things therein that I must occupy when I shall lie at Whitehall. My men hath neither shirt nor any other thing to shift them until that come. Trust none of your men to ride any [of] your housed horses, but only James Cromp or William Marchington ”

“ Young Mrs. Castleton, whose tastes inclined towards up-to-date comforts, often grumbled at its inconveniences, but on the whole the family liked it. They would not have exchanged it for a suburban villa for worlds. Just on the opposite side of the harbour, with the jetty and the broad strip of green water in between, was the furnished house rented at present by the Macleods. It stood in the more aristocratic portion of Chagmouth, apart from the town and the fishing, in company with one or two other newly-built residences. ”